


I Carry Your Heart With Me

by punkpasta



Series: I Melt With You [2]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Jewish Wedding, M/M, Wedding, because i am.... also jewish, beverly marsh ultimate wedding planner, bill denbrough actual softie, i cried real jesus tears while writing this, its set in the early 2000s obv so they're adults, stozier marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 15:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13592721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkpasta/pseuds/punkpasta
Summary: Stan and Richie are getting married and everyone cries





	I Carry Your Heart With Me

**Author's Note:**

> im so soft for this honestly holy shit

His alarm clock beeped to life for the third time that morning. He rolled over, punching it off the side table- which did little to prevent the beeping. He sat up, flopped his lanky upper body off the bed, and slapped the button on top of the clock. Sunlight streamed through the pale-blue curtains. The man slumped, hanging halfway off the bed, the matching pale blue blanket set tangled around him. shaggy black hair hung over his head. 

And then Richie Tozier remembered what today was. 

He was out of bed in a flash, leaving the covers in a heap. He stripped out of his boxers, falling into the shower. Stan had been here- he could tell by the carefully hung towels, the toothbrushes in their holders, the shower curtain placed just so- all the little things Stan did absently while getting ready in the morning, fixing Richie’s little messes. 

_ Stan had probably been up for hours _ , Richie thought,  _ making all those phone calls and last minute changes and threatening the caterers. _ He scrubbed at his mop of hair.  _ All I had to take care of was myself- and now I’m half asleep in the shower and i slept in late. He’s gonna divorce me.  _

Stan Uris was sitting on a kitchen chair, downstairs, frowning into the phone. It wasn’t the caterers- it was the florist. 

Mike was making breakfast. The smell of turkey bacon snuck upstairs to Richie, who turned off the shower and yanked on some jeans. He walked downstairs shirtless, his narrow chest almost milk-white, plopped into a chair and scooted it closer to Stan. 

Stan sighed again. “Maybe leave something for the wedding night, dear?”

“Hey, my pants are on! That’s something! Not like you haven’t done all ki-”

Stan clapped his hand over the other man’s mouth. Mike raised an eyebrow. He was sporting his usual warm smile and blue pajamas. 

“Oh no, oh shit! I’m not supposed to see the bride before the wedding! We’re doomed, babe.”

“We had better not be, the deposit on the catering and the venue are non-refundable.” 

Richie started shoving toast into his mouth, sending crumb avalanches down his body to the floor. Stan frowned. Richie looked up at the other man and smiled, pushing his still- damp hair back from his eyes. 

_ In less than 12 hours, he’s going to be my husband,  _ Stan thought.  _ Richie will be my husband. It’s too late to back out now. _

Richie was washing down his third piece of jam toast with a cup of over sweetened lukewarm milky coffee when the door swung open. Beverly was grinning ear to ear, carrying two suitcases, with Ben coming up the porch steps behind her. 

“Mazel tov!” she grabbed Stan around the shoulders and hugged him briefly. He smiled at the familiar words, knowing Beverly had learned them for the occasion. 

The next three hours were a whirlwind of nail polish, color-coordinated neckties, and skincare. Stan and Richie were shuttled to their sides of the venue- a hall in Bangor, decked out in pale blue tablecloths. 

Richie walked down the aisle, gripping the handful of flowers tighter than anything he’d held before. His bright-blue glitter nail polish was already chipping, and he saw Stan under the chuppah. Ben, Mike, Bill, and Eddie held the four posts, each dressed in a matching navy blue suit. Richie hadn’t seen anything more beautiful in his life- every time he saw Stan, he’d think to himself  _ I have never looked at anything more beautiful in my life.  _

He’d insisted on saying his vows first. “So I don’t sob like an infant when you read yours, because you know I will, and you know the others will make fun of me.”

Stan had agreed. Beverly walked next to Richie, wearing the statement white dress of the century. Richie had a tuxedo to match his soon-to-be husband- every time he thought that word, he felt like vomiting, but in a good way. His hair had been left loose, tamed a little but allowed to flop over his ears and decorated with a hint of silver shimmer. He’d had to rely on Beverly’s hand on his own to keep moving, because when he saw Stan he’d almost died. 

Stan’s curls were carefully arranged around his head, his tuxedo affixed with pale carnations. He looked paler than usual, but still glowing. 

Richie stepped onto the raised podium, finally just him and Stan facing each other and surrounded by flowers- and the five friends, Beverly having stepped back to stand by Ben. there wasn’t a religious leader standing with them, and less than a hundred people sat in the white folding chairs. Gay marriage wasn’t legal in Maine yet, and the honeymoon was planned for Cape Cod so the two could have a legally binding partnership. 

“S-stan,” Richie started. Nobody said it, but the seven all had the same thought. Richie swallowed. “Stanley. I have a, um, poem to read.” Richie started digging around in his pockets. He pulled out some crumpled sheets of paper, frantically trying to straighten them out. The room felt too quiet and too big- normally, he’d crack a joke at his own expense but today felt too solemn for that. Too real. 

“To start out..” Richie swallowed.  _ Don’t laugh _ , he thought, trying to beam it into the heads of the people around him. “Stan, you know me better than anyone, and most people know I don’t have a way with words exactly.” Stan smiled. “So I thought, there’s nothing I can write that will be perfect for this- and I figured you should get perfect.” Richie paused, shuffling his wrinkled papers. 

“Um, this is by e.e. cummings.” Richie cleared his throat and began to recite, tuning out the people around him and focusing on Stan’s face, framed by its halo of hair and light filtering through the high windows. 

“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart). i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)” Richie and Stan had been through a number of struggles. They’d spent almost four years broken up once, and enough time outside of that. 

“i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you.” They had both decided they’d spent enough time apart. Sometimes, knowing someone for that long means you know what they’re going to do before they do. 

“here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)” Loving the other wasn’t the first thing that either man could remember. It was only the most important.

“and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart.

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart).” 

Richie blinked, trying to disperse the concept of tears forming in his eyes. He could hear someone crying- Bill, he’d find out later- and Stan was pulling out an envelope. 

“Richie.” Stan’s voice, normally clear and even, wavered. “I wrote this when we were in high school and I thought you would never love me. I wrote this when we broke up for two months.when we were eighteen. I wrote this when we were finishing college, when we weren’t together. I wrote this when you left for California after you graduated, and I thought you would never come back. I wrote this when we fought. I wrote this when I was afraid you would walk away- and when I was afraid I would walk away too.” tears welled in Stan’s eyes. “I wrote down something I needed to tell you in each of those moments. I wrote a promise. Today, I’m keeping that promise. Today, I’m taking it a step further. I’m not promising to love you. I am promising to-” Stan cut himself off, trying to control the breathing that had began to shake. Stan began speaking again, picking up from a different part of his notes. “ Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.” He took a breath. “ Sameiach tesamach reiim ha-ahuvim k’sameichacha y’tzircha b’gan eden mikedem. Baruch ata Adonai, m’sameiach chatan v’chalah. Baruch ata Adonai, m’sameiach chatan im hakalah.” Everyone was crying by now. Stan and Richie exchanged silver rings, and Ben handed his chuppah pole to Beverly and pulled out a glass cup. He slipped it into a cloth bag and set it on the ground. Stan grabbed Richie’s hand- his husband’s hand, now, and crushed the glass under his heel. 

They turned out to the audience, smiling. Both men turned in and kissed, gently at first and then firmly, in a way that made the promise they were making to each other real. Friends and family clapped, cheered, shouts of “Mazel tov!” coming from various parts of the room. Richie knew that his tears had rubbed off on Stan’s hand, but he held it anyway as they both let it sink in that they were married- they had been connected before, in the way that only people who have grown up loving each other can be, but it was real now. Something physical they could look at and say “that’s where I promised I’d love you forever.” 

People began shifting their attention to the far end of the room, where food had been laid out and music was beginning to play. Bill would put the chuppah away, and guests were beginning to move their ceremony chairs over to the tables close to the buffet. The seven- the old loser’s club- gathered at the central table to eat. 

Soon after the food had been cleared away, the calm background noise music began fading away. Stan and Richie stood, walking to the center of the room where lights had been set up. The opening chords of a song they’d listened to maybe a thousand times swelled through the room, sounding at least a little better than they did coming out of a car radio or a walkman. Richie rested his head against Stan’s and they wrapped their arms around each other, swaying gently to the sound of the music-  _ The future’s open wide, I’ll stop the world and melt with you _

**Author's Note:**

> creds to ee cummings for the poem and modern english for the song.  
> hit me tf up at my tumblr @mlmtrashmouth i love messages and friends


End file.
